


And Lay Our Bones to Rest

by Muccamukk



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Haldane and Jones Don't Die, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Canon Relationships, Conflict, Everyone Needs A Hug, Homophobic Language, M/M, POV Outsider, Period-Typical Homophobia, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22622011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Attending K/3/5's first reunion in 1980, Burgin's not sure how he feels about seeing all the old faces again. He's even less sure when he begins to work out that his former officers are not who he thought they were.
Relationships: Andrew A. "Ack-Ack" Haldane/Edward "Hillbilly" Jones
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33
Collections: Loose Lips Sink Ships Prompt Meme





	And Lay Our Bones to Rest

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to SlightlyTookish for beta reading.
> 
> A lot of details of the reunion are lifted from Burgin's book Islands of the Damned, but the characterisation is much more based on the show. There is a lot of more or less unresolved homophobia happening in this fic.
> 
> Based on the prompt for Loose Lips Sink Ships: "Andrew 'Ack-Ack' Haldane/Edward 'Hillbilly' Jones, They both survive the war and build a life together. Years later, they attend a K/3/5 reunion together to the surprise (or not) of the surviving men from their company."

There was knowing, objectively, that you were getting old, and then there was seeing men who were frozen in your heart at twenty years old long since turned into old men. Romus had talked to Lieutenant Stanley on the phone, heard the crack in his voice, and for that matter looked at his ownself in the goddamn mirror, and Florence too, but coming face to face with Stanley at age sixty was another matter entirely.

Shaking his former officer's hand and recognising his eyes but not knowing his face had been the start of a night full of uncertainty for Romus. "Do you remember that, Burgie?" Mo would ask in a voice that hadn't changed a whit in thirty five years, and Romus would try to figure out if he did, if he'd been there, if the other guys didn't have it right, or if it was Romus who was losing his grip. More than half his life trying not to think about those years, and now, all at once it had rushed back in on him, the same, but different.

Sledge's hair had thinned, but his doe eyes were still wide and dark, and he still looked about ready to jump out of his skin at the clatter of a fork; Leyden'd lost half his face to jowls, but he still had the same pugnacious tilt to his chin, and if nothing else, Romus remembered all too well how he'd gotten those scars. Captain Haldane's hair which had been iron grey on Peleliu was snowy white now, but still as thick as ever, and no matter how soft he'd gotten around the middle he still moved with the ease of a born athlete, and he still had Hillbilly Jones never more than five feet away from him. Jones had the limp he'd picked up on Okinawa, now braced with a cane, but still moved with the suddenness of a bird, and still tracked Haldane with his eyes.

One of the bus boys was turning records, putting on song after song of swing music and the crooners. Romus could watch these men dancing with their wives and see them in bars in Australia. Their feet moved more slowly now, but their individual and often jarring ideas of the beat were the same.

At least Romus had Florence at his side. That could be his constant after three decades. She had her arm through his, same as she'd had as they'd walked Melbourne's parks all those years ago, and he could clench her hand and lean into the familiar scent of her hair, and remember that this wasn't all just some hallucination of the past, and that more than sorrow had come out of the war.

"Strange, ain't it?" Jones asked when Romus gave up and went to the bar to find enough scotch to resolve the double vision of the world.

"You could call it that," Romus agreed, leaning against the bar. He looked over at Jones, who was sitting on a stool with one ankle hooked around the leg and the other stretched out to rest his heel on the rail under the bar. He was holding a beer, but didn't seem to be drinking it, his eyes steady on where Haldane sat with the Sledges and Mo. "How've you been?"

Jones shrugged. Romus could sympathise. There wasn't much of a way to sum up thirty five years in an easy answer. "We've been okay," Jones said.

Florence, tired of waiting for Romus to bring back her drink, had wandered up to the bar by then and asked, "Are you married, then, Captain Jones?"

Florence had always been good at asking questions straight up, rather than coming at them sideways like a crab. Romus tried to remember if he'd introduced them, if they'd met back in the day, or if she'd just picked Jones out from the picture of K/3/5 that he kept framed next to the fridge. The evening so far had been a bit of a blur, even without the booze now softening Romus' impressions.

Jones smiled, a flash of teeth that didn't touch his eyes. "I was, for a time. Didn't stick."

"Sorry to hear that," Florence said. Romus leaned against her, slipping his arm around her waist and trying not to think of a world where she'd grown sick of his nonsense and gone back to Australia. "No children?"

"No, thank..." Jones hesitated before the profanity and settled on, "the Lord. But you two must. It was all Burgie here could talk about: getting you back to Texas and filling the state full of babies."

That led to Florence telling him about the kids and the grandkids, and how they were doing, and the worries of raising children in this day and age. Jones listened with what seemed to be genuine interest, his head cocked and his expression intent. Romus would wager that Jones would be able to name all their children and grandchildren and what jobs they had and where they lived at the end. But then, Hillbilly had always been a good listener, always there for his boys from the Cape though Pavuvu and Peleliu and finally leading King Company on Okinawa after Haldane had caught that sniper shot and a medical discharge. Jones could have gone home then too. He'd put his time in, serving three campaigns, but he hadn't wanted to leave them after the company had lost so many officers. It was the kind of sacrifice that Romus had never been able to put into words.

Now, listening to Jones' occasional comments and gentle questions, he felt the past tugging at him, raising memories of huddling in the rain and hearing Hillbilly talk Sledge down from his fretting, or sitting together on a cliff overlooking the East China Sea talking about how he was going to get Florence home. Things he'd tried not to think of in years, and worse things, too, that he'd done or seen done. That kid on Okinawa who...

Romus shivered, wondering if this reunion idea had been a mistake. Maybe the war was best left in the past.

"All right, Burgie?"

Romus started. He hadn't even noticed that Haldane had left his table and drifted over to the bar. He turned, his whole body twisting around to stare wide-eyed at Haldane, for a moment seeing the greasy dark hair and two-day beard of those last days on Peleliu, not the genteel elder statesman of the moment. He wore a navy pinstriped suit with a red pocket square, not blood-soaked dungarees, but the gentle concern in his eyes hadn't changed, even if the scarring across his forehead would never truly fade.

Romus took a breath, held it, let it out, like he would sighting a mortar. He nodded shallowly. "All right, Skip."

"Comes back all at once sometimes, doesn't it?" Haldane said, and Romus felt a sudden urge to tears at the understanding in his tone. Haldane always understood his boys, and knew the right thing to say. Romus almost hadn't been able to go on after the company had lost him, didn't know if he'd have been able to without Jones.

Florence, having fallen silent, squeezed Romus' arm, and Romus took another breath, and then a sip of his scotch. The room still felt close, but not as much as it had a moment ago. He remembered Haldane's words on Peleliu, after Leyden had been wounded, how you couldn't dwell on any of it. He'd spent three decades trying to follow that advice.

"Florence," Romus said, pulling himself away from the war, "This is Ack-Ack Haldane, best darn officer the Marines ever had."

"I'll drink to that," Jones said, and took a sip of his beer, the first Romus had seen him take.

Haldane laughed. "No one's called me Ack-Ack in a long time." He reached over and took Jones' beer from his hand and tipped back a long swallow, his throat bobbing. "Still call him Hillbilly though," he added, and Romus couldn't tell if he was serious or not.

Jones snorted, but didn't try to reclaim his drink. "He's taught all our friends to call me that, too," Jones grumbled, but he didn't sound especially put upon. He shifted his weight, flexing his leg so it wouldn't freeze up, and Haldane went over to stand beside him, hand on Jones' shoulder. Jones leaned sideways, resting his weight against Haldane's side.

They'd always had that easy companionship, even in combat, so close it seemed to the guys that Ack-Ack and Hillbilly could plain read each other's minds sometimes. Romus had envied it, right until he'd seen Jones' face after Haldane got hit. He was glad they'd kept touch after the war, when so many of them hadn't been able to.

"Do you work with Captain Haldane, Captain Jones?" Florence asked, and Romus felt absurdly grateful. She was so good at covering the little lapses he still sometimes had, always had been. He had no idea how a hard-scrabble cotton farmer like him had landed a woman like her.

Haldane and Jones exchanged a look, and Romus saw an entire conversation pass between them. "Did for a time," Jones said, "When I first came back, and Andy needed help. Was his amanuensis." Andy snorted and took another long pull of Eddie's beer. "After, I went to school on the GI Bill, been working in advertising ever since."

Romus had a hard time picturing that, but he supposed that when he wanted to Jones could charm the birds out of the trees, when he couldn't sing them out. He certainly looked the part of an adman, in his beige suit with his curly hair combed down flat, face half hidden by owlish wire-rimmed glasses. They seemed to make his blue eyes sparkle even more.

"And you're a college president, aren't you, Captain?" Florence asked, but slowly, like she was putting pieces together in her head. She was seeing something that Romus wasn't, or maybe she just thought she was.

Another exchange of glances. Romus began to feel as though he were the only one out of the loop. "That's right," Haldane said, "Though I've been thinking of retiring in the next year or so."

"Don't know what he'll do with himself," Jones muttered, "be crawling the walls inside of a week, driving me out of my mind. I'll have to put him out to pasture like a darn cow."

Haldane elbowed Jones in the ribs, hitting hard enough to push his weight off Haldane and onto the bar. Jones just laughed at him, and the look he gave Haldane was full of the same unalloyed admiration he'd so often shown during the war. Romus had heard Jones'd moved up to Massachusetts, but hadn't realised they lived together.

Free of the weight of Jones leaning against him, Haldane offered Florence a half bow and asked her if she wanted to dance.

"I'd be delighted, Captain," she said, and took his arm without hesitation.

"Don't steal my wife," Romus called after them, which made Florence laugh at him and Haldane just shake his head.

The record rolled to "When the Roses Bloom Again," and Haldane led Florence across the floor with more grace than Romus had ever been able to manage. The Skipper always had been a fantastic dancer, but now that Romus thought of it, he'd only seen Haldane with a girl in his arms once or twice.

He hadn't realised that Haldane and Jones were living together.

"Spent a lot of time over the years watching Ack-Ack dance with other men's wives," Jones said, almost as if to himself. "He ain't stole any of them yet."

Romus tore his eyes away from Haldane and Florence, and looked at Jones, who was still watching the dancers. He was cradling the empty beer glass in his hands, and Romus remembered how casually Haldane had drunk from it, even though it was Jones' drink. There was something tense in his shoulders, like he was expecting a blow.

No. They couldn't be. Not Ack-Ack and Hillbilly.

"I thought you'd been married," Romus heard himself saying.

Jones still wasn't looking at him, but his mouth twisted in a half smile, and Romus didn't think he was seeing the dance floor any more either. "Was, for a while," he said. "One of us had to be, and Andy was too proud. Sides, I don't think he knows what to do with a woman past dancing with one."

Haldane had taken Florence away so that she wouldn't hear this. Sledge had always said Haldane was a true gentleman, Jones too.

Romus thought of the cover of Time magazine from a few years ago, the moustached navy technical sergeant looking at the camera unashamed even though the text read in letters too big to ignore: "I Am a Homosexual." Romus hadn't allowed that issue in the house. Had talked about cancelling his subscription. It could have been Andy Haldane in his dress blues on that cover.

"You've got a fucking lot of nerve coming here," Romus spat. He'd never had much of a temper, but being made a fool of always brought it up. He wanted to go out on the dance floor and pull Florence away; he half rose to do it. Jones' hand around his wrist stopped him cold.

Romus stared down at Jones' hand for a moment, then yanked his arm away. His body was running hot with anger and his fists came up automatically, even though he hadn't thrown a punch since he'd been in uniform and rarely had then.

Jones hadn't raised his own hands, hadn't moved at all past that hand on Romus' arm. Romus glanced quickly at the dance floor, but Haldane had Florence turned away. He was watching though, and Romus could see the fear in his expression. A pair of homosexuals had walked into a bar full of Marines, and they were afraid of what would happen. Of course they fucking were. What did they think would happen?

Andy Haldane was worried that Romus would hurt Hillbilly Jones, and Jones wasn't lifting a finger to stop him. Romus dropped his hands, feeling sick. He tried to slump onto the barstool behind him, but missed it and would have fallen to the deck on his ass if he hadn't caught himself on the edge of the bar. Jones didn't lift a finger then to help him up, either.

"A fucking lot of nerve," Romus said again.

Jones lifted his chin. "Might be we do."

A hundred questions swirled through Romus' head, the first among them being if he should round up Mo and Jim and run them right out of the room. More, obscene, questions about who did what to whom followed, and Romus couldn't think. What he ended up asking was, "How long?"

"You mean the two of us?" Jones asked, and Romus could only nod. The song changed to something fast and swinging by Count Basie, and Haldane kept Florence dancing. "Since 'fore you were a boot, Burgie."

So they'd always been like this, and Romus had never known. They'd hidden. They'd lied. Well, of course they'd lied. They'd have been thrown out of the Corps. Romus' mind almost jumped to the notion that they _should_ have been thrown out of the Corps, but he couldn't. He owed both men his life, and more times over than he could count.

"What the hell are you doing going around and letting people know?" Romus demanded. He could happily have gone to his grave in ignorance, he decided. "You're risking a lot."

Jones shrugged. He still had his bad leg resting on the rail, his cane leaning against the bar and his weight tipped back on his elbows, a picture of nonchalance. Or he would have been, if he hadn't had a tick in his jaw and white knuckles around the beer glass. "We ain't really," Jones told him. "Andy's retiring next year anyhow, and my company don't care. Most of 'em are like me. And, if it comes down to it, I can still whoop you."

"You probably could," Romus admitted. Haldane might have put on a paunch around the middle, but at sixty-three Jones was still made of whipcord muscle, bum leg and all. If Jones had thought it were a danger, he'd have picked up his cane and put Romus down before he knew what hit him. Romus had seen him do the same with a riflebutt on the Cape. It'd been to a Jap who'd broken through the line and been coming at Romus with a bayonet levelled at his gut. When Romus, shaking, had tried to thank him, Jones had just clapped him on the shoulder and nodded, like he'd done nothing worth consideration.

Romus tried to knock back the rest of his drink, but he'd already done it and his empty glass clinked against his teeth. He felt more shaky and unsure than he had since he'd come in, which was saying something, and wished that Florence was there to squeeze his arm again.

"We ain't looking to cause trouble," Jones told him, voice low and reasonable, like Romus was a boot on his first landing. "Hell, I didn't even want to come, but Andy, well, he wanted to see his boys again. Everything'll be out in the open soon, and he wasn't sure we'd be invited to the next one. Tried telling him this'd be more trouble than he could account for, but you know him. Skipper always had to scout out enemy fire his own self, nothing any of us could do to hold him back."

That was how he'd been hit, back in the day, trying to find something out he could have asked Romus or one of the scouts to look to.

"You didn't have to make it so obvious," Romus snapped. "Rub my nose in it like that." He didn't especially plan to tell anyone, but if he'd worked it out in under ten minutes, then everyone else would too, and word always got around. Marines gossiped like housewives.

Jones' laugh had no humour in it. It was the coldest sound Romus had ever heard from him. "Tried to tell himself that too. Wouldn't listen. Said he's tired of lying, especially to you boys."

The song ended, and Haldane and Florence started back towards the bar. Romus froze, not sure what he was going to do now. He didn't want to talk about something this shameful in front of his wife, but he could hardly pretend nothing had happened either. Thirty years, he'd said but nothing but good about these men. He would have sworn to their moral fibre on a stack of Bibles.

Haldane deposited a flushed and grinning Florence back on Romus' arm, and went to stand next to Jones again. He too had colour in his cheeks, but his eyes were guarded.

"You should ask your lady to dance," Jones told Romus.

"You should!" Florence agreed, apparently not so worn out that she couldn't cut another few circles around the floor. It was the perfect escape. Romus couldn't help resenting that Jones had offered it to him.

Still, without much in the way of options, he took Florence in his arms and led her into something sweet and slow sung by Dinah Shore.

"We used to dance to this in Melbourne, remember?" Florence asked him.

"Course I remember," Romus said, maybe a little too shortly. He remembered a dancehall so packed that they'd stayed close and moved slow by necessity as well as desire, the electric fans above them doing nothing to cool the air or dissipate the cigarette smoke. Florence had smelled of baby's breath and champagne, and they'd both been young enough to fly. Half of K/3/5 had been there, even the officers, and Captain Haldane leaned against the bar and watched, while newly commissioned Lieutenant Jones twirled one girl after another across the floor. "Hillbilly always seemed to get the pretty girls," he said.

"That why you never introduced us back then?" Florence asked, fishing for a compliment.

Romus gave in easily. "Course, had to keep the prettiest one all to myself." Though, it seemed, he'd have been in no danger there. _Since before you were a boot._ Almost forty years. Romus turned them, swaying awkwardly with the music, until he could see the bar.

Jones was still sitting where Romus had left him, but his head was down and his shoulders slumped, as though he'd been running all day and had only now caught a moment to rest. Haldane was leaning over him, his hand on Jones' shoulder, his lips so close to Jones' ear that their hair brushed. Romus couldn't see their expressions, but he could imagine them. He looked away.

"Didn't have much to do with officers, anyhow," Romus said, not liking how sullen his voice had gotten.

"You wrote to me about those two," Florence pointed out, which was true enough. Romus didn't remember what he'd said, but he was sure it had been glowing, at the time, when he hadn't known. "You used to write me such long letters."

They still had them, along with some of Florence's replies, those that had survived being care worn and censor streaked. Romus remembered Jones spending every minute of his free time on Okinawa writing to Haldane, hoping that his letters would find his former skipper as the Corps bounced him from hospital to hospital. He'd kept Haldane's replies sealed in plastic, next to his heart. Had he warmed himself in his foxhole thinking of Haldane's kisses the way that Romus had thought of Florence's? Had he dreamed about fucking Haldane, of sucking his cock, or the other way around? Romus shuddered at the image, and cast another look at the bar. Sledge and his wife were there now, talking to both captains. It looked like friendly conversation.

Romus looked down into the face that had grown old alongside his, a face he loved every wrinkle in, and wondered if she'd worked it out yet. She'd been a step ahead of him before, but wasn't saying anything now. However, Florence had always been one to ignore things that she didn't like but couldn't change. It was quite possible that she'd already made her peace with discovering Jones and Haldane's perversion, and filed it away with all the rest of the unpleasant facts of life, like the Carter Presidency.

Maybe she just didn't want to kick up a fuss in public. Romus almost wished she would. It'd give him some direction through this aching bewilderment.

He should have felt glad, flushed with pride even, to have his wife in his arms on the dance floor. He'd caught a looker, much finer than all the other men's wives, even now, and he wanted to show off how lucky he was, and wanted to show her something of the man she'd fallen in love with all those decades ago, as if the company of others could bring that back. But now he felt too tired for all that, or maybe he had all night. The strangeness of the gathering wasn't what Romus had expected, even before Haldane and Jones had soured it.

"I think I need to sit down," Romus said when the song ended. He went over towards an empty table at the edge of the floor, not wanting to shoot the shit with Jim or Mo about things they remembered and he didn't.

"I'll bring you some water, dear," Florence said, a little reproving, as she always was if he had more than two drinks these days. That familiarity at least had a lineage Romus could trace, so he didn't talk back like he usually did.

Jones was still talking to Mrs. Sledge at the bar, but Haldane had vanished, so, for that matter had Sledge. Florence made for the far end of the bar, keeping a wide space between herself and Jones. She had figured it out then, even while she'd danced with Haldane. She always had been smart as well as pretty. Good. They could pretend those two homos didn't exist, and then Romus could have a quiet word with Stumpy Stanley about not notifying them if they ran this again.

Florence was having trouble getting the bartender's attention. Romus frowned, wishing for that glass of water, for something to fill his hands as much as slaking his suddenly dry mouth. He fumbled through his pockets for smokes, before remembering for the hundredth time that Florence and the Doc had ganged up to make him quit. Romus slapped his palm on the table in frustration, fury building.

Only it felt less like rage, and more like his grandson's wail that it wasn't fair that he had to go to bed when his big sister was allowed to stay up.

"Need a smoke?" Eugene Sledge dropped into the chair across from Romus without asking, holding out a crumpled pack, tapped so that a couple stuck out from the ripped top.

"No," Romus said, spiteful that Sledge of all people was offering. Then he sighed and took a cigarette. "Got a light, too?"

Sledge did. It was Gunny Haney's old Guadalcanal Zippo, and Romus turned it over a couple times before he lit the smoke and pulled in a long inhale. He gave the lighter back, and instead of pocketing it, Sledge took the corners between his thumb and forefinger and spun it idly in his hands.

"You okay, Burgie?"

"Just dandy," Romus muttered. Had Sledge worked it out about their former officers? Had he worked it out thirty-five ago? Romus pictured everyone knowing except him, and tried to meld that image onto anything that had happened, but it didn't quite work. Sledge never had been able to keep his trap shut for more than two minutes anyway, not when he had something on his mind.

To prove Romus' point, Sledge commented, "Saw you talking to Hillbilly."

Romus grunted.

"Thought you were like to hit him, for a second there."

"What's that to you?" Romus grumbled. He hadn't thought about it, but of course the whole room had probably seen Romus raise his fists, and seen Jones distraught, afterwards. Well, he expected they wouldn't think too harshly of him when they worked out why.

"Nothing, really." Sledge pulled his tobacco pouch and pipe out and started to fuss with filling it. "Just you were my sergeant and all, and I'd have felt obliged to throw in on your behalf once he'd started clobbering you. Then we'd both've been licked."

Romus was inclined to agree. Though all that bird watching, or whatever it was that Sledge did at that fancy university, had kept him relatively hale, his hands were smooth and soft, and he'd never been much use at hand to hand even when he'd been in the Marines. He pictured Hillbilly Jones knocking the sense out of both of them without getting off his barstool. It was a surprisingly vivid image.

"Thought pansies were limp-wristed sons of bitches," Romus complained. He looked across the bar. Haldane was back and was talking to Jones, their heads again almost near enough to touch, while Mrs. Sledge had intercepted Florence. Were they planning that? Or could, like Ack-Ack and Hillbilly, Mr. and Mrs. Sledge telegraph their thoughts across a room?

"Might could be not all of them are," Sledge said mildly, and it was then that Romus knew that Sledge had known, and since before this evening, too. He wondered how, but didn't want to ask. He could hear the disapproval in Sledge's voice plain enough, same tone as he'd used with Shelton when he'd done almost anything.

"Howsit you'd have picked my side?" Romus asked.

Sledge lit his pipe and took a puff to make sure the brier had caught before shrugging and saying, "You were my sergeant."

"He was your skipper," Romus countered, and the words stung him rather than Sledge. Haldane and Jones had both been their captain at one time or another. How could they do this to Romus, when he'd trusted them with so much?

Sledge shrugged. "A man's gotta stick with his squad."

Romus wondered if he meant it, or if he was somehow trying to shame Romus into something. What he couldn't imagine. He sure as fuck wasn't apologising to Jones. Or talking to him ever again. Romus tipped his smoke against the ashtray, wondering if he could finish it before Florence got back.

"But I wanted to thank you for helping Stumpy put this together," Sledge said, sounding bright all of a sudden, as if the whole previous conversation hadn't happened. The only thing that linked the two was that he was still pushing Gunny Haney's old lighter in circles across the table top. It made an irritating scratching sound.

"I was just helping out," Romus said, unsure of his footing.

Another shrug. "Way Stumpy tells it, you did most of the calling around to let people know, ringing up information, finding addresses."

Romus had done that. Once he'd started, he'd hardly been able to stop until he'd tracked down as much of the company as he could remember. Only a few dozen had showed up, but he'd talked to so many more. The stories they told, the lives they'd had, even just scraps he'd found out over the phone, astonished him. He glanced around the room, taking in all the familiar-unfamiliar faces once again, and wondered at it all. There'd been times, especially on Peleliu, when he'd thought none of them would make it out. Most of them hadn't, but now here they were, getting old and fat and showing each other pictures of their grandchildren.

"Think you and Stumpy will do it again?"

"You'd have to ask him," Romus said, still cautious of where this conversation was leading.

"Will when I can," Sledge said. He tapped his pipe on the side of the ashtray, settling the tobacco. "Leyden's talking his ear off just now, has been for an hour."

Romus considered the question, setting aside the concerns of a moment ago. For all its strangeness, he'd liked seeing the old crowd again. After all these years of nearly pretending the war hadn't happened, he liked the honesty of talking about it again, of trying to remember how it had been instead of trying to forget. "I'd like to," he said.

"You gone call the same list?"

So that was it. Since it didn't seem likely that Romus could be able to run Jones or Haldane out now that they were here, Sledge wanted to know if Romus was going to make sure they were disinvited to the next one.

"What if I didn't?" Was Sledge really going to demand that Romus call Haldane and Jones brother Marines?

Instead of fiddling with his pipe or glancing around the room like he expected to find a tropical bird somewhere in the rafters, Sledge looked right at Romus, his eyes wide and full of that wounded look that had always made Romus worry after him and want to curse him out at the same time. "I don't know as there'd be much point in calling me either, then."

"What happened to sticking by your squad?" Romus asked. He felt a precipice opening up under him, an unexpected void where he'd expected to put his foot down on solid ground. Or maybe he'd just been plain falling since he'd gotten here and was only now about to hit the ground.

"I ain't the one who'd be letting this divide us, Burgie." There wasn't any actual sense to Sedge's words, but even after thirty five years Romus recognised by the stubbornness and the edge of a whine in his voice that had been the build up to Sledge hounding something right to death.

All at once, Romus decided that he was too goddamn old to deal with Eugene Sledge and his petty crusades. He let out a last breath of smoke and ground the cigarette out in the ashtray until it splayed into three separate pieces. "I'll talk to Stumpy Stanley," he said, but they both knew it for a white flag.

Sledge at least had the grace not to thank him. He just got up and said something painfully polite to Florence as he passed her.

"You been smoking?" Florence asked as she set two tall, perspiring glasses of water on the table.

"Yup." Romus was going to have to make up for it later, but for now he just ignored the trouble he was going to be in and looked past Florence to the bar. Sledge had pulled his wife out onto the dance floor—or, more likely, it'd been Mrs. Sledge who'd done the pulling—and he was swaying back and forth like his legs were made of wood and his ear was made of tin. Jones was talking to Mo, still resting easily on his barstool, another full beer held idly between his palms, and Haldane had gone over to try pry Leyden off Stanley.

It could have been the battered remains of K/3/5 in Melbourne, or at the canteen on Pavuvu, filtered through the distorting mirror of three decades. It could have been a room full of strangers who Romus didn't know, and never had known. Except Romus could tell from the tilt of Jones' chin that he was about to tell a joke a moment before Mo laughed, and he remembered what an awful dancer Sledgehammer was because Romus had danced with him himself in that canteen. He'd held Leyden in his arms as he'd bled into the Okinawan mud, and knew that Haldane was going to be out of luck.

Florence put her hand over his, and he turned his palm up so they could hold onto each other. She knew this, too, having gone back to Australia after ten years away. He'd stuck by her like glue then, as she was sticking to him now.

Looking up, needing space to blink the mist out of his eyes, Romus looked back at the bar. Jones was watching him, and their eyes met across the room. Jones raised his eyebrows, a question in them, like he was asking Romus if the mortar squad had enough ammo and was ready to go. And, despite everything, Romus jerked his head up: Yes. Ready.

For what, Romus didn't know. He didn't even know what he would say when he talked to Stanley, or if he'd keep his half-made promise to Sledge.

He thought of the framed photo he kept next to the fridge: taken that last day on the beach of Peleliu. Only a handful of the company had been fit enough to pose for it, and even then they'd been ragged and worn to the bone. Romus had been in it next to Sledge and Shelton. Jones and Haney had stood tall in the back. Haldane had already been evacuated, along with so many others. Maybe a single platoon's worth of men had stood on that beach—the ghosts of the company in rows behind them—but it was still more than had made it to this first reunion.

It seemed a shame, Romus decided, to thin those numbers further, to hurt these few survivors when he didn't have to, even if he had good cause.

"Not many of the Old Breed left," Romus said.

"No," Florence agreed. "Fewer every year."

Romus sipped his water, and said a prayer for all of their souls.


End file.
